Monday, January 20, 2020
Advocacy group Migrant Justice had accused Deputy Jeffry Turner of violating the department's policies on fair and impartial policing during a November 22 traffic stop, arguing that he had no reason to inquire about Luis Ulloa’s immigration status or prolong the stop until federal authorities arrived.
But Sheriff Kevin McLaughlin said Friday that Turner's actions were justified because he was concerned that he was dealing with a potential human trafficking situation.
“There is no evidence that supports the contention that Deputy Sheriff Turner’s purpose in dealing with the individuals in the vehicle (that he had lawfully stopped) was to enforce federal immigration law,” McLaughlin wrote in a six-page report released Friday afternoon.
Tags: Chittenden County Sheriff's Office , Kevin McLaughlin , Luis Ulloa , ICE , immigration , Migrant Justice , Web Only , Image
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
The Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles committed to policy changes and antidiscrimination training to settle legal claims that its employees aided immigration authorities' crackdown on undocumented activists.
Migrant Justice, an advocacy group for undocumented farmworkers that sued the DMV and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in November 2018, announced the settlement Wednesday at the Vermont Statehouse.
"This agreement will create a set of protections that will be strong enough to guarantee the safety and security for all," Migrant Justice spokesperson Enrique Balcazar said through an interpreter.
Tags: Migrant Justice , Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles , Immigration and Customs Enforcement , Enrique Balcazar , American Civil Liberties Union , driver privilege card , Web Only , Image
Monday, December 2, 2019
Advocacy group Migrant Justice has accused Deputy Jeffry Turner of violating the department's policies on fair and impartial policing during a November 22 traffic stop of a car along Interstate 89.
Turner pulled over the vehicle for speeding and asked its passengers to provide identification. When Luis Ulloa, who lives in Franklin County, presented a Mexican passport, the deputy photographed the document, contacted U.S. Border Patrol agents and prevented the vehicle from leaving until they arrived, Migrant Justice said in a press release Monday.
Tags: Migrant Justice , deportation , ICE , border patrol , Kevin McLaughlin , Sheriff , Chittenden County Sheriff's Department , Web Only , Image
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
The grant was announced Wednesday by the Workers Lab, which invests in experimental ways to empower working people. Migrant Justice was among five winners selected from more than 200 applicants for the lab's Fall Innovation Fund challenge.
Will Lambek, a Migrant Justice organizer, said the grant award is a "testament to the work that immigrant dairy workers in Vermont have done to create, fight for and implement this program that’s now transforming the industry."
He and Enrique Balcazar, a Migrant Justice spokesperson, traveled to New York last month to meet with the Workers Lab board of directors and present about the program. The organization received applications from 39 U.S. states and 14 different countries.
Migrant Justice has an operating budget of less than $500,000, Lambek said, so the grant will make a “huge impact."
Tags: Migrant Justice , farmworkers , Milk with Dignity , Will Lambek , Ben & Jerry's , Workers Lab , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
Not surprisingly, the number of newcomers has dropped sharply over the past two years as policy changes by the Trump administration have pushed refugee admissions to historic lows.
Each year, the president establishes a cap on the overall number of applicants the nation will admit, and lower limits on refugees from different regions of the world.
When the U.S. refugee admissions program was established in 1980, the cap was set at more than 230,000. In 2019, it was a mere fraction of that at just 30,000. The Trump administration has proposed further reducing the cap to 18,000 in the 2020 fiscal year, which began on October 1. Vermont's resettlement numbers held relatively steady between 2008 and 2016. During that nine-year period, the state welcomed, on average, 336 refugees each year.
In the three years since, resettlement numbers have fallen dramatically. In 2017, Vermont resettled 236 refugees, and in 2019, just 115.
Given its relatively small population, Vermont has historically welcomed an outsized proportion of all refugees accepted into the U.S. each year. While Vermont has about 0.2 percent of the population of the United States, the state received at least 0.6 percent of refugees resettled in 2011 and 2012.
Vermont welcomed 7,956 refugees during the three decades between 1989 and 2019. Though that's a statewide total, nearly all of those people landed in Chittenden County, the majority in Burlington and Winooski.
That's not a count of the number of former refugees who currently live in the state; once resettled, people move into and out of Vermont. It also doesn't include people who immigrated via the U.S.'s asylum program.
But those numbers do provide a window into global upheaval over the past three decades. The graphic below shows that in the 1990s, the majority of refugees resettled were from Bosnia and Vietnam. The majority of arrivals in the last decade have been from Bhutan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia.
You can explore 30 years of refugee resettlement in Vermont in the chart below:
Tags: Refugees , Donald Trump , Web Only , Image , Video
Monday, August 26, 2019
"This individual is not american, he is dangerous, he wants to carry firearms and I heard him say that he wants to harm individuals with said firearms," said that tip, submitted though an online portal. The agency asked a Vermont State Police trooper to find and interview the man named.
A trooper conducted a vehicle stop. The man was with his wife and their newborn child, according to an affidavit filed by Homeland Security Special Agent Timothy O'Leary.
Tags: Cole Swarkowski , Immigration and Customs Enforcement , racism , University of Vermont Medical Center , U.S. District of Vermont , federal court , harassment , Web Only , Image
Sunday, July 28, 2019
Several hundred protesters marched through Williston to the nondescript Immigration and Customs Enforcement intelligence center on Sunday in an effort to draw attention to the state’s little-known role in Trump’s national immigration crackdown.
Nineteen people were cited for disorderly conduct after blocking entrances to the 24-7 facility for two hours. But the federal government’s pursuit of undocumented immigrants continued unabated, as ICE’s sister agency, Customs and Border Protection, set up a highway enforcement checkpoint in South Hero during the widely publicized demonstration against federal deportations.
Tags: ICE , immigration , Customs and Border Patrol , Peace & Justice Center , protest , Department of Homeland Security , border enforcement , deportation , Web Only , Image , Slideshow
Monday, April 15, 2019
Weinberger first announced his position Saturday afternoon following the president’s tweet Friday that he is "giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities," or municipalities that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Weinberger has vowed to buck the Trump administration's immigration policies before, and on Monday, the mayor called the president's latest proposal “un-American.”
“Here in Burlington, we do not buy into, we do not support [Trump’s] very dark vision of immigrants that are attempting to come to this country to seek asylum,” Weinberger said at an afternoon news conference.
He said immigrants are often “fleeing very difficult situations” and have enriched Burlington’s community.
Tags: Miro Weinberger , Donald Trump , Burlington , immigration , mayor , president , Web Only , Image
Friday, February 8, 2019
The federal Department of Justice is withholding more than $2 million in law enforcement grants from Vermont pending a review of the state’s compliance with a federal law that requires local officials to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
“These grants are the DOJ Byrne JAG grant and the DOJ COPS Anti-Heroin Task Force grant,” VSP spokesman Adam Silverman wrote in an email to Seven Days.
The feds are refusing to pay the state a promised $1.3 million toward heroin enforcement until Justice Department officials are convinced that Vermont is in compliance with federal law, according to Silverman. Another two grants, for about $480,000 each, are also on hold.
Tags: Donald Trump , opiates , bias free policing , fair and impartial policing , police , heroin , Department of Justice , Adam Silverman , Jeff Sessions , Image , Web Only
Thursday, January 24, 2019
Cruz Alberto Sanchez-Perez, known as Beto, had just pleaded not guilty to a charge of driving under the influence when he was scooped up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, according to Migrant Justice.
The 26-year-old farmworker, who has been in the country since 2015, has filed for asylum in the U.S., claiming that he faced persecution in his home country based on his sexual orientation. After his arrest on immigration charges, Sanchez-Perez was being held at the Strafford County, N.H., detention center and was due to appear at an immigration court in Boston on Thursday, Migrant Justice said.
Tags: Cruz Alberto Sanchez-Perez , Migrant Justice , Marita Canedo , ICE , Pride Center of Vermont , Jay Diaz , American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont , Will Lambek , Image